


Tug on my Heart

by smile_for_me



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: AND IT'S CUTE, Alternate Universe - College/University, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Pining, except it's not really an AU, in the future, it's just like, they're both like. really oblivious okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 11:54:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13681170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smile_for_me/pseuds/smile_for_me
Summary: That's the thing about Tooru: He's got this power over people. This attraction. This ability to pull people into orbit around him with just a flashy smile or an amazing jump serve or a snorting laugh.





	Tug on my Heart

**Author's Note:**

> for krisz (http://cinnamonsnow.tumblr.com/), i hope this brightens your day!
> 
> thank you to my best friend bri (https://anime-does-it-best.tumblr.com/) for betaing. thank you to the hqvalentineexchange (https://hqvalentineexchange.tumblr.com/) for organizing this! i had a lot of fun writing this and was grateful to have something to force me to write.

“Love of the marvelous comes naturally to the human heart.” 

-Jean-Jacques Rousseau, _Confessions_

 

* * *

 

nerdkawa: Good luck on your first day of classes, Iwa-chan!

 

Me: No need to sound so chipper just because you start /a day/ after me

 

nerdkawa: It’s okay to admit that I chose the better school!

 

me: You’ve already had practice for like two weeks, I’m technically still starting after you

 

nerdkawa: Practice isn’t the same as school, Iwa-chan, come on

nerdkawa: Speaking of practice

nerdkawa: Will you pick me up tonight? we can get dinner after to celebrate your first day~

 

me: Yeah that’s fine

 

nerdkawa: Perfect! See you tonight!

 

me: See you tonight

 

* * *

 

If someone told six-year-old Hajime that by the time he was in college he would still be friends with the boy from down the street who wore alien shirts and screamed when he saw a bug, he probably wouldn’t have believed them. He definitely wouldn’t have predicted he’d be sharing a little two-bedroom apartment with him and their best friends from high school. Sure, even then there had been something about Oikawa that was a weird mix of intimidation and magnetism, a strange tug on his soul toward him that Hajime still feels even if it’s now mostly covered by knowledge that Oikawa is the biggest nerd he’s ever met. But he had never expected the tentative friendship to last this long. 

 

Despite himself, Hajime finds himself smiling at the short texts he receives from Oikawa throughout the day, only stopping when he goes to practice. By the time he returns home that evening, he’s feeling somewhat wiped from the day of reading syllabi and introducing himself and mostly ignores Hanamaki and Matsukawa who are already home and sitting on the couch together. He tells them he’s getting dinner with Oikawa that night, ignores their teasing, and goes off to take a shower, laying in bed on his phone for a while before he realizes he should leave to get Oikawa.

 

He arrives at the gym at Oikawa’s school steps out of his car into the fading sunlight, scrolling through his Instagram feed as he waits. Soon enough, he hears a call of “Iwa-chan!” and looks up to see Oikawa waving at him from the entrance to the building. Hajime’s heart stutters in that familiar way it does when it comes to Oikawa and he smiles a little, locking his phone and slipping it into his back pocket. 

 

Oikawa has that after-practice glow of happiness to him and his hair is damp from the shower he had just taken. He’s dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans, mirroring Hajime’s own outfit, and Hajime’s eyes widen when he sees Oikawa is wearing _his_ sweatshirt bearing the name of _his_ university, and he glances down to realize he’s not wearing his own sweatshirt like he had assumed, but Oikawa’s similar one from his own school. When he looks back up, Oikawa is already opening the trunk of his car and saying, 

 

“You look so distracted, Iwa-chan, did school already fry your brain after just one day? Let’s go to dinner, I’m hungry.”  
  
“Shut up,” he answers a little begrudgingly, reaching for the door handle when Kuroo calls out, “Have fun on your date you two!” grinning smugly from next to his annoyingly red car as he digs through his bag for his keys.

 

“Very funny, Tetsu-chan!” Oikawa shoots back as they both slip inside the vehicle. Hajime looks over at Oikawa as he puts on his seatbelt, trying to gauge if the assumption that they were dating by one of his teammates makes him uncomfortable or not and is quickly distracted by the way the orange glow of the sun just starting to set adds to the warmth of Oikawa’s skin. His cheeks are rosy and his eyes are the color of melting chocolate when he looks and catches Hajime staring. 

 

“What?” he asks with laughter in his voice as he pulls out his phone. “Let’s go to that ramen place.”

 

“Yeah,” Hajime replies, forcing himself to look away because if he doesn’t he might confess right then and there—which would ruin the years he has built up of hiding the stupid, unfading love he feels for the other. He starts the car and leaves the parking lot, ignoring the way his pulse pounds in his ears.

 

* * *

 

After their dinner that marks the beginning of classes, they don’t really see each other as often. Oikawa’s school is about fifteen minutes away, and he usually leaves before Hajime to go to class or early practice or get in some homework time. He tends to stay at school into the night, doing homework or attending practice, only sometimes making it home for dinner. Though they live together—even share a room—Hajime barely sees Oikawa over the next few weeks and often finds himself lying awake in bed until Oikawa stumbles into the dark room late at night just to make sure he’s okay. 

 

As a result of Oikawa spending so much time away from the apartment, Hajime finds himself spending more and more time with Hanamaki and Matsukawa alone than he did in high school. Even if it’s not at home, they go to the same university and often have lunch and study together, meaning he finds himself alone with a couple well-established in their romantic relationship, and without Oikawa there, he has no one to turn to when they’re being particularly couple-y and instead finds his mind wandering in those moments—often to Oikawa—and he’s usually pulled out of his thoughts by the pair telling him that he looks “particularly love sick” today. 

 

The weekend is the only time Oikawa gets any semblance of a break—just Sunday, really, because Sunday is his one day off from practice, and he’s the type to try and do most of his homework on Saturday so he doesn’t have to rush and cram to to do it all on Sunday night. As a result, Sunday is the only day Oikawa—who is fundamentally _not_ a morning person—sleeps in, giving Hajime the chance to carry out an unspoken tradition between them. 

 

It started in high school the first time Oikawa hurt his knee badly enough be confined to his bed on the weekend. On Sunday morning, he snuck into Oikawa’s room though the window—more out of habit than out of not being allowed through the door—with some comic book about aliens he found that he thought Oikawa would like. They spent most of the day laying in his bed and reading it, even watching some of Oikawa’s favorite documentaries that Hajime usually wouldn’t watch with him. 

 

After that, they tended to spend their Sunday mornings together, usually laying in one of their beds and doing nothing useful, but sometimes going to get breakfast or coffee or laying outside in the park if it was a nice enough day. For most of last year, they met up for food somewhere, but now that they live together, Hajime has started making them breakfast. 

 

This Sunday morning is no exception and ten-o-clock finds Hajime dishing up two plates of food and pouring two cups of coffee, leaving the rest out for Makki and Mattsun to have whenever they emerges. When he makes it into the room, Oikawa is sitting in bed, hair messy, glasses on, scrolling through his phone, and the smile on his face when Hajime walks in is enough to make Hajime’s heart stutter and jump into his throat. 

 

“So kind, Iwa-chan,” he says as he takes the coffee and his plate, downing half the cup as Hajime sits down on the bed with him.

 

They eat in the faded laughs from the few rays that make it through the curtains, Oikawa finishing both his cup of coffee and Hajime’s before either of them finish their food. They talk the whole time, filling in each other about their weeks, how their classes are going, the funny thing one of their professor’s did. Oikawa talks about his teammates and Hajime watches with a small smile on his face, attention completely captured by the boy—man—in front of him whose hair is curling around his face and whose eyes are bright behind his glasses. It reminds him of the first time he saw Oikawa at the park in their neighborhood, standing in front of him at six years old with a volleyball in his hands and a grin on his face. Sometimes Hajime gets so caught up in Oikawa’s orbit, so enraptured, that he doesn’t understand how anyone couldn’t be. Sometimes his pull is so strong, Hajime doesn’t see how anyone could resist it—or want to. 

 

Eventually they set aside their plates but keep talking, showing each other things on their phones, curling around each other in a way perfected only by two people who have been best friends for a long time. 

 

At one point, after a long stretch of quiet from the other, he looks up from his phone and sees that Oikawa has fallen asleep next to him, obviously still tired out from the week, and Hajime can’t help but smile and carefully take his glasses from his face so he doesn’t have to hear his complaints about the uncomfortable marks they’ve left on his face when he wakes up. He looks at him for a long moment, at his long eyelashes and pink lips, and thinks about kissing him—a fairly common thought, if he’s being honest—but quickly pushes the idea down, instead laying next to him in a way that could be considered normal and falling asleep himself.

 

* * *

me: You’re still gonna come tonight, right?

 

nerdkawa: Yes, iwa-chan, I already said that!

 

me: I’m just making sure

me: I went by myself with them last time

 

nerdkawa: I know! I keep saying sorry…

 

me: It’s fine

 

nerdkawa: I will be there this time! I promise!

nerdkawa: I’ll be home by six at the latest!

 

me: Okay, okay. I’ll see you then

 

nerdkawa: See you then, Iwa-chan!

 

Hajime still isn’t entirely convinced Oikawa will make it there on time, but he decides that there’s nothing he can do about it anyway and goes about his day, getting home a bit before six to get ready. They made the reservation at the place earlier that week, deciding to retry the whole friend-get-together they tried two weeks before, and it was just fancy enough that Hajime finds himself trying to go through his mental catalogue of his closet to think of something appropriate to wear, and almost misses the conversation drifting though Makki and Mattsun’s slightly open door. 

 

“…been texting me _all day_ asking about what he should wear,” he hears Matsukawa say, and he pauses at the entrance of the hallway, hoping neither of them heard him and he can continue eavesdropping. 

 

“I _know_ ,” Hanamaki whines in response. “And he keeps complaining about Iwaizumi. ‘He’ll probably wear that blue sweater, Makki, and he’ll look _so cute_ I won’t be able to stop myself!’”

 

Hajime tenses at that because they _had_ to be talking about Oikawa, there’s no way it was someone else. But that meant—

 

“God, I know,” his thoughts are interrupted by Mattsun again. “I keep telling him he should confess already. They’ve been pining after each other for _years_.”

 

Hajime doesn’t hear anything after that. He feels like he’s been hit in the chest and has to physically take a step back as he absorbs the new information like a blow. Oikawa…likes him? Has been pining after him for years? Thinks he looks cute in that blue sweater? He shakes his head. This is too much. This…changes so many things in ways he can’t even begin to think about. 

 

He makes a point of walking loudly, saying, “I’m home,” as he passes their door to make sure not to arise any suspicion about him possibly hearing their conversation. 

 

Oikawa gets home a little bit later and walks into the room as Hajime is staring at a pair of jeans, a thousand thoughts flying through his head. His soft call of “Iwa-chan?” is enough to pull Hajime out and he finds himself going through the usual pleasantries with him on autopilot as they both get ready to go. He unconsciously dresses himself in the blue sweater he heard Hanamaki mention earlier. 

 

He doesn’t get a good look at Oikawa until they’re about to leave and almost has to look away when he sees him. Even if he thinks Oikawa looks good in whatever he wears, Oikawa dressed up to go out somewhere has to be one of his favorites. The dark jeans he’s wearing are a bit nicer than the ones he wears every day, and he’s wearing that reddish cardigan Hajime likes, and he has his glasses on, which Hajime always likes. If he wasn’t so busy staring at him, he probably wouldn’t have noticed the way Oikawa’s eyes widen a little when he sees Hajime. He can’t linger on that thought for too long, though as Makki is calling for them to hurry up so they can leave, but that doesn’t stop Hajime from losing his breath when Oikawa smiles that soft smile reserved for only him and beckons him out of the room. 

 

Hajime tries to act normal during dinner, but he knows he’s not doing a good job the third time he misses a question directed at him. He notices Oikawa looking at him suspiciously by the end of the night, and almost successfully avoids the confrontation that night. But, Oikawa is waiting for him just inside their room when he comes back from the bathroom to go to bed, a stern look on his face and his arms crossed. 

 

“What?” Hajime asks hesitantly as he comes inside, thinking maybe he can feign ignorance until he’s had some time to figure this all out. 

 

The look Oikawa gives him is unimpressed. “Come on, Hajime,” he says and Hajime looks more fully to him at the use of his given name. 

 

“What?” he repeats and Oikawa glares at him this time, eyes sharp behind his glasses as he advances on Hajime, the centimeters he has on him more prominent now that they’re standing closer together. 

 

“You’ve been acting strange all night,” he says and Hajime can’t really deny that, but he’s still gonna try. 

 

“No, I haven’t.”

 

“Yes, you have.”

 

“I haven’t.”

 

“You have!” Oikawa’s voice is louder this time and Hajime bites on the inside of his lip nervously. 

 

“I’m fine, Oikawa,” he insists, walking past him to just go to bed. Before he makes it, Oikawa’s hand is grabbing onto his wrist and spinning him around with a surprisingly strong pull. Hajime looks at him with eyes slightly wide at how forward he’s being. They’re standing almost chest-to-chest at this point, and Hajime has to tilt his head back a little to see him properly, see the confusion and concern dancing in in his eyes. This close, he can see a few freckles dusting Oikawa’s nose and is reminded of a six-year-old boy with those same freckles, more pronounced after a summer spent outside. He thinks that maybe even then he was caught, trapped by the stars in his eyes and smile on his lips.

 

There’s no smile on those lips now, but Hajime’s eyes are drawn to them as Oikawa begins to speak, the urge to kiss him rearing up in a familiar way—though stronger than usual this time. 

 

“Is everything okay at school? Did something happen? I know I’ve been g—“

 

“I overheard Hanamaki and Matsukawa earlier, “ he interrupts, the words tumbling out of his mouth. “They said you’ve been pining after me for years.”

 

Oikawa freezes, staring at him with his expression frozen mid-word, his grip on Hajime’s wrist loosening. He seems to be too caught off guard to say anything in response, so Hajime presses on. 

 

“Is that true?” he asks, and his voice is maybe a little breathless. 

 

Oikawa’s mouth is closed now, but he doesn’t seem up for talking and just nods slowly, an uncertain look on his face. 

 

Hajime’s heart soars at the same time as he feels incredibly disappointed with himself that he didn’t figure it out sooner. 

 

Oikawa is still staring at him, eyes wide with worry and uncertainty and Hajime can’t think of what to say—can barely think at all—so instead he pulls his hand from Oikawa’s slackened grasp, settles it onto the back of Oikawa’s neck and surges upward, giving into the urge he’s felt for years and kissing him. 

 

It’s like they’ve been doing this for years—the way Oikawa immediately responds, moving closer so they’re pressing up against each other, his hands grasping onto the back of Hajime’s t-shirt as he _kisses him back_. Hajime tries to pull back, but Oikawa follows him—and Hajime hasn’t had _that_ much experience kissing, but he thinks Oikawa’s pretty good at it. 

 

It’s only a couple seconds later that they’re pulling apart and Hajime’s looking up with wide eyes at Oikawa who’s staring back at him. They’re both holding onto each other as they’re silent for a second—Hajime’s hands at the base of Oikawa’s neck and Oikawa’s hands grabbing onto his shirt—before, almost in unison, they both grin, laughter filling the space between them as they lean together, their foreheads meeting. 

 

“So…” Oikawa says, the light sound of laughter in his voice. “You like me, Iwa-chan?” he asks and his tone is teasing, now, but Hajime can’t bring himself to care. 

 

“Shut up,” he answers before kissing him again, still dumbfounded that it took them so long to do this as they fall into bed together.

 

* * *

They crowd is bigger than one would expect from a university-level men’s volleyball game, but Hajime gets why so many people are there. They all want to see the beautiful and famous Oikawa Tooru—Japan’s best setter, no doubt being scouted for the National Team.

 

That’s the thing about Tooru: He’s got this power over people. This attraction. This ability to pull people into orbit around him with just a flashy smile or an amazing jump serve or a snortinglaugh. Hajime’s been under his spell for a while now—even more so these days now that Makki and Mattsun tell him off for smiling at his phone too much when Tooru’s texting him instead of staring off into space and daydreaming about him—so he gets why everyone wants to see him. 

 

That doesn’t make him any less annoyed at everyone blocking the way to the court now that the game’s over. Sure, he’s going against the flow of people, but he wants to see his boyfriend and congratulate him on the win—the only win he’s been significantly worried about so far this season. 

 

It takes a few minutes, but he gets to the court eventually and is immediately greeted by a certain tall, messy-haired middle blocker—definitely not who he came to see. 

 

“You’re wearing Oikawa’s team jacket again, Iwaizumi-kun,” Kuroo says with that lilt in his voice that always grates on Hajime’s nerves. Luckily, his response is interrupted by an arm being slung over his shoulder. 

 

“Of course he is, Tetsu-chan, don’t be ridiculous,” Tooru says and he’s already leaning to give him a kiss as Hajime turns to look at him, completely ignoring the noise of protest from his teammate. “Just let me get changed and then we can go, Iwa-chan, okay?” he says as he pulls away. 

 

Hajime nods, smiling at him as he walks away and glaring at Kuroo when he notices the look he’s giving him. 

 

“Have fun on your date, _Iwa-chan_ ,” he says with a smirk as he follows Tooru away. 

 

“I will,” Hajime answers, a confident smirk mirroring Kuroo’s on on his own face.

 

* * *

 

It took them, arguably, too long to get here, Hajime thinks as Tooru fiddles with the radio in his car, driving to the ramen place they go to after Tooru’s games. But they did make it. And that has to count for something, he thinks. 

 

_It definitely counts for something_ , he amends, that tug on his heart toward Tooru pulling a little harder when the other glances over and smiles at him, the same smile Hajime remembers from that six-year-old all those years ago. 


End file.
